[an error occurred while processing this directive]
When employers in Washington state stopped paying overtime, temporary Microserf Mike Blain decided to throw off his chains.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

When it rains, it pours. Even as Microsoft's lawyers prepare for their showdown
with the Feds in antitrust court, a rabble-rousing group of temporary workers
are starting to organize in Bill Gates's own backyard.

"We have to organize," says Mike Blain, a cofounder of the Washington Alliance
of Technology Workers, better known as WashTech. "The industry can get
whatever it wants because there's no voice for workers."

Blain, a technical editor pulling down US$30 an hour, says tech temps are
treated as second-class citizens and need an organization to lobby for
their interests. While most temps are happy to give up stock options and
health insurance for flexibility and higher pay, Blain describes temp agencies
as "parasitic."

"Bloodsucking," he seethes for emphasis. "They add no value whatsoever."

Blain and more than a dozen other temps - half of them from a pool of about
5,000 on the Redmond campus - founded WashTech after the state's labor
department allowed employers to eliminate mandatory overtime pay for high
tech workers who make more than $27.63 per hour. "My first reaction was,
'They can't get away with that,'" says Blain. "My second reaction was,
'They just gave us an amazing organizing hook.'"

So far, 900 people have joined the WashTech mailing list. The group is
on the hunt for funds, with a long-term goal of establishing a worker-owned
cooperative for high tech free agents in the Puget Sound area. WashTech
is also setting up meetings with other Microsoft temps, pejoratively known
as "A-dashes" - a reference to a temp-status code that prefaces their email
addresses. Microsoft doesn't seem too concerned. "We've read about WashTech,"
says company spokesperson Jim Cullinan. "We don't know much about them."